Council newspapers

Despite the best efforts of councils in various parts of the country, justifications for council-run newspapers which stand up to any scrutiny have been few and far between.

The origins of council newspapers can be tracked back to the period of time when council communications began to be less about keeping the public informed, and more about news management.

Individual communications officers shouldn’t be blamed for this, it was part of a wider culture in which, for example, it was decided the best way for councils and police to score highly in the ‘How safe do your residents feel’ performance indicator was to reduce the number of crimes which were actively reported to the press.

After five years of constant – and thoroughly right – attack and scrutiny by communities secretary Eric Pickles, very few council newspapers are published more than once a quarter. Pretty much the only justification to hold water from councils, in my opinion, is their need to communicate with an entire borough, rather than just readers of any one publication.

Like this:

And so the fight we thought was almost over takes another peculiar turn. Yes, I’m back on about council newspapers. Bear with though, I’ll try to make this one interesting.

In the latest edition of its magazine, the Journalist, the NUJ gives some background to its opposition of Government plans to restrict the number of times a year a council can publish a newspaper.

According to the NUJ, it believes the problems facing the local newspaper industry go far beyond ‘any perceived competition from council newsletters which provide prompt, accurate advice and information not necessarily carried elsewhere.’

While the first part of that statement is true, the notion that just because it isn’t the silver bullet to solve an industry’s challenges it therefore isn’t worth doing is downright bonkers – a bit like a GP telling an obese person that just because chocolate alone isn’t responsible for all their weight gain, they might as well indulge in the £1 mega bars of Dairy Milk next time they’re in WH Smith.

The second part of the statement, however, is the bit which should frighten any journalist – the union which represents journalists claiming that council newsletters carry ‘prompt, accurate advice and information.’ What they actually carry is ‘prompt, accurate advice and information as the council sees it.’ It is therefore not journalism to put a council newspaper together, it’s an act of PR.

And in committing that act of PR, those who describe themselves as journalists working on them do cause real harm to a regional press industry which employs people who chase stories without fear or favour, and who always aim for their stories to be fair and balanced.

Of course, given that Mr Pickles’ rules on council newspapers are a code of conduct, rather than law, there was always a danger the most ardent supports of council newspapers would carry on regardless. And so it proved in Greenwich.

As for how journalistic it is, it certainly lacks news values. Take the August 16 edition, which covered the riots in London (a good 10 days after it happened). The intro on the front page was:

“Greenwich councillors have given a firm commitment to stand beside residents and businesses affected in last week’s rioting and looting in Woolwich and Charlton.”

As local councillors, should we expect any less? The previous week’s front page, which hit the streets while the looting was dying down, was dominated by the fact a visit by a children’s author to a library was a sell out. Hold the front page! If ever there was proof that councils make duff newspapers, this it it.

Of course, I’m not saying the local newspapers in the area are perfect, of course they’re not. But in council newspapers, with their guaranteed income from their own departments’ advertising, we don’t get to see the news of the community, we get to see the news the council wants the community to see.

The Cabinet Office, after all, has form for not really embracing the spirit that we all have a right to know. And so it has proved, with the Cabinet Office now appealing the Information Commissioner’s decision.

The BBC’s Martin Rosenbaum blogs here about the current position. It was a BBC FOI request which was initially refused which triggered the Information Commissioner ruling.

Without wishing to sound dramatic, I do think that the Government’s real commitment to transparency and openness will be revealed by the outcome of this case.

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One of the worst offenders on the council newspapers front is Tower Hamlets, one of the poorest parts of London. It spends more than £1.5million a year producing East End Life, recouping around £1.4million a year in advertising, although £625k of that comes from internal council advertising.

Published weekly – because councils have so much to communicate EVERY week – it runs to 52 pages, has a print run of 99,000 and is delivered to every home in the borough plus 475 drop-off points. It isn’t so much competing with the private sector newspapers in the area so much as appearing to try and run them out of town.

The backbench communities and local government commitee of MPs which met before Christmas to discuss plans to restrict the publication of council newspapers last week returned its verdict: That the plans should be revisited.

The MPs, who heard evidence from those in favour of council newspapers - such as the mayor of Hackney, Jules Pipe - and those against them, such as the Newspaper Society, said there wasn’t sufficent proof that council newspapers compete with normal newspapers.

The MPs argue that to tell councils how and when to publish newspapers is to cut across the government’s localism agenda – ie ensuring decisions are taken locally as often as possible. However, if ever there was proof that councils can’t always be trusted to take the right decision about things which benefit councillors, such as propaganda, then this is it.

The MPs also suggested that local government minister Eric Pickle’s plan to limit council publications to just four issues a year aren’t needed. The MPs seem to be living under the belief that there are only a handful of councils which are producing newspapers which operate as a rival to existing newspapers.

If you look at this purely in terms of frequency, then this is the case. There are around a dozen councils in the country which publish their newspapers at least fortnightly.

But the damage council newspapers can do to the local newspaper market doesn’t stop there. In 2009/10, the top-tier councils producing council newspapers at least once a year estimated they would offset the £19million combined cost of their publication with £9million of advertising, of which £3.97million would come from outside spending, be that private sector or other public sector bodies, such as primary care trusts.

In other words, £5million of council advertising is being diverted into publications run by the council.

The Mayor of Hackney, a chap called Jules Pipe, was among those from local government circles to be called before the committee to discuss the issue. As the elected mayor of an authority which produces a newspaper – Hackney Today - fortnightly, he is not surprisingly keen to hang on the right to publish a newspaper. The fact he is a former journalist perhaps exaggerates this.

Mayor Pipe said that the council needed to communicate with residents to let them know what was going on, and that the local paper – with a cited distribution of 8,000 by Pipe – doesn’t cover all the news that comes out of the town hall.

I blogged a while ago about a boast by the Local Government Association that it hadn’t indulged in doomsday warnings about the impact of Government cuts ahead of the comprehensive spending review.

Very commendable, you might think, had not every other lobbying organisation gone and done the exact opposite. The result was a bloodbath kicking for local government, with many in town halls up and down the country angry at how the councils were to suffer more severe cuts than other sectors of government.

I argued at the time that perhaps now was the time for councils to question what value they get from the collective £14million they spend on subscriptions to keep the LGA going, not to mention the many millions more on conferences the LGA puts on. After all, it shouldn’t be beyond the wit of town halls to effectively lobby their local MPs.

One of the many allegations made by the Conservative Party in the run up to the general election was that Labour had allowed the state to get involved in too many aspects of life – both at central and local government level.

Maybe it’s ironic, then, that a flagship Tory council this week took a brave new step into a hitherto area of life uninfluenced by the public sector – how taxpayers choose their wine.

Really.

Tucked away in the what’s on section of Hammersmith and Fulham council’s fortnightly propaganda round-up, H&F News, is a three-page guide to picking the best wines for the summer, complete with ‘top tipples’ column written by someone from a firm which had also taken out advertising in the supplement.

Up until now, the only time I’d seen councils talking about alcohol was when they’d strayed into public health territory and talked about the dangers of booze. Of course, there’s a big difference between binge drinking and buying a bottle of plonk, as I’m sure the council would point out.